ADHD, Determination, and Borrowed Dopamine

Staying determined when motivation is gone

Let’s talk about determination, being ADHD, and motivation. Let me tell you, the last few months have been a tough one. It’s been tough to stay motivated, to turn and fix things and get moving. So how did I stay motivated? How did I do that? When you have community and support. It’s really been everyone. So many of you have followed me and jumped right on the bandwagon when I had to move and restart and do all those things. There are so many I can’t even name all the names at this point. All of you have been amazing. We’ve got Avery and V, obviously, and Katherine and Denise, Mary Beth, Emma, Jess, Jessica, and all of the peoples, and I know I’m forgetting a lot of names, ladies. I’m sorry, it’s too early and I’ve only had this much coffee. But staying motivated always comes back to my why. I have found success in life through community, accountability, and body doubling.

So when you are frustrated and can’t get out of your own way, what works for you? For me, it’s definitely accountability. Whether it’s my husband, or nine times out of ten it’s you, or even my kids: “Hey, I really need to get this laundry folded. Can someone tag-team it with me, or just hang out and talk to me while I get it done?” Because ADHDers will show up for other people. We just have a hard time showing up for ourselves sometimes.

I don’t know what I would have done without all the people in my community, in my world. Even when I felt like my world was falling apart, I was showing up for everybody else; there was no way I was showing up for myself at that point, at all. And even that was phoning it in for a while. I was so tired. I was so burned out. But I think one of the coolest things is the feeding of the dopamine needs when you can’t make your own. When you are frustrated, when you are burned out, when you are falling apart, and let’s be clear, September, October, November was me falling apart, you’ve got to steal somebody else’s dopamine. Or share it. Being on the other side of it, having people need my dopamine when I couldn’t make my own, that got hard, and it made me feel terrible that I had to rely on others. But you know what? I had other people to go find it from.

Accomplishment amnesia: what did you actually do last year?

So, what are you determined to change this year? We’re still in January, and I haven’t been able to come in here and do my normal New Year stuff. I’m not huge on New Year’s resolutions, but what do you want to accomplish this year? We’ve been talking in the community, and somebody said, “I’m in the same spot as I was last year. I feel so frustrated. I’m angry with myself.” But what did you accomplish last year? I bet if you start writing down the things, you’ll surprise yourself, because we have accomplishment amnesia. There’s an amazing blog post about that; we’ll drop the link below the live. We forget what we have done and what we actually have been able to do.

Especially when you’re looking at a year and thinking, “2023 was horrible, I couldn’t do anything.” When I sit down to think about 2023, I’m obviously hyperfocused on all the negatives that happened September through December. I could give you a long list of nine million horrible things that happened in 2023, and why I failed, and why I did horrible. Why, why, why. That’s not true. That is totally not true. So: what did you accomplish?

In 2023, I accomplished buying into the business that I created even more. I let go of the edge of the pool. It was just me out there, sink or swim. I was betting on myself. And before I let go of all the safety nets to do that, I was talking to my husband, and he said, “Babe, if there was anybody in our family, anybody in our house, that I would say, I will bet on that person because they will 100 percent get it done, it will be you. You will get it done, because that’s what you do.” That was motivating, and a little bit of pressure, I’m not going to lie. But it was motivating, because if this is how other people see me, then I should see myself that way.

High-masking achievers and believing your own hype

I think what happens, for a lot of us, is that we are such high-accomplishing, high-masking individuals that we don’t see ourselves as the get-stuff-done person. We see ourselves as the neurotic, drowning, crying-in-the-bathroom person, because that’s the side we don’t show anybody else. But if we don’t believe that public persona, if we don’t believe our own hype, if we’re not our own biggest hype man, how is anyone else going to show up for us?

It’s always weird for me, because I am a get-things-done person. Very much so. I will sacrifice myself, mind, body, and soul, to get things done. Which is bad, just to be clear. I’m not the sit-down-and-have-an-emotional-breakdown person. Never have been. And then September hit for me. I’m healing, physically and mentally. I’ve been working with a therapist, healing past trauma, all of these things. And with all of that stuff in September, it was one of those “you never get more than you can handle” situations, except I fell apart. I was that emotional basket case, which is not my normal, which made me go, “Oh my God, I don’t do this. I can’t do this. There’s no way I can do this. I’m going to fall apart.”

When the mask breaks: RSD, frustration, unmasking

Because I wasn’t able to bring out my normal engagement. And that’s exactly what it is: that “always sacrifice yourself, mind, body, and soul, to get things done” is a form of masking. I wasn’t able to bring that part of myself out, which crippled me, which made me mad, which made me more frustrated, which brought RSD out to play by massive amounts. Massive amounts of RSD and frustration came up because I wasn’t able to do my normal masking.

And then you have these thoughts: if I show people my true self, are they still going to show up for me? Because essentially we’re just people who want to be loved and validated. So if people see the true forms of myself, are they still going to show up? And the answer is normally yes. And if they don’t, then they weren’t your people anyway.

It was such a weird process for me to stay determined, because I will tell you, without this team, without V, without Gina, without Avery, without Lauren, and all of you guys, it would not have happened. Because I can show up for somebody else when I can’t show up for myself, and this was the first time that was truly tested for me. It’s been a huge learning curve in being unmasked over the last few months. Because I’m quirky, we know, I’m ADHD, and I lean into that quirkiness a lot. But that’s its own mask sometimes. Leaning into the Star Wars-loving quirkiness can become its own mask when you don’t know what to do with all of the trauma and the other things in the background.

I think society is more accepting of our ADHD quirks, “oh, she’s so ADHD, blah blah blah.” I don’t think they’re as accepting of our autistic tendencies, unless they’re the fun, quirky ones. Especially autistic burnout.

Burnout, rest, and the panic of doing nothing

2023, for me, was letting go of the side of the pool, but also battling burnout, trying to find a good work-life balance. Because we have a tendency to just work ourselves, sacrificing body, mind, and soul, and then all of a sudden we’re sitting there empty, because we haven’t been paying into the cup. 2023 was a lot of learning for me. There are things I have to be real with myself about, like maybe I’ve taken on too many tasks. And it’s funny, because not all of these tasks are for work or a paycheck. Some of them are just homework assignments I’ve given myself. Okay, I don’t need to read four books this month. I can just not read any books this month and focus on the things I need to do. But it’s the panic that sets in when you’re not doing anything, because rest seems ridiculously self-indulgent.

Well, we’ve been called lazy and stupid, and there’s a list a million long: “you’re being too dramatic,” whatever we’ve heard our whole lives. It’s been beaten into us, mentally, maybe physically, that we can’t rest, that it’s not okay. And as Americans, we really have that hustle culture beaten into us. Especially if you are a female entrepreneur. The female entrepreneur world is toxic as hell. So freaking toxic. You can never take time off. You always have to be on, always have to be that influencer-type personality. Even self-care becomes something about your business, not for you. Coaches will give lip service to resting and giving your body what it needs, but it’s just lip service, because you should still be posting about it and going live about it, and, and, and.

Social media burnout and sustainable posting

I grew my short-form video account by about 11,000 people in the first year. I was doing well. But I got to a point where I felt like I just didn’t have anything else to say. I didn’t have any valuable content to post. So I just didn’t, for like six months. I still interacted, I still did stuff on there, but I didn’t put out new content, because I had run the well dry. I had been posting three times a day, doing lives, doing all the things they say to do to grow, and it did work, but it was not sustainable, and it burned me out. So now I try to post once a day. That’s my goal. And I try to make sure it’s valuable or relatable. And if for some reason I don’t get it posted, it’ll be okay. The world still goes on. I’ll post the next day.

It’s about letting go of that shame. Success does not have to look like the box somebody else told us existed.

Consistency looks different every single day

That’s a big thing: success doesn’t have to look like a box somebody else built. Even consistency. You guys know I talk about consistency, especially if you’re an entrepreneur. Actually, no: if you’re a mom, a wife, breathing and alive, there has to be consistency in life or we won’t thrive. But consistency looks different every single day. I have my good, better, best versions of consistency. What does my good day look like? It does not look like my best day. And how many best days do I have a month? Maybe two. Maybe. You can’t hold yourself to a standard that’s not sustainable. It has to be obtainable, it has to be actionable, and it has to be supportable when you’re ADHD. If your list of things to do every day isn’t actually obtainable, then it’s a list built to shame you.

And if your standard looks like the social media gurus, the coach gurus, whoever you follow, if you are trying to look like someone else, that’s not sustainable. That’s somebody else’s box, and you don’t belong in it. I have to tell people that quite a bit. It’s okay to look at things and model them once or twice to get yourself off the ground. But if your whole plan is “this person’s doing it and it’s really successful, so I’m going to do exactly that,” just be you. The right people will show up.

Persistence over consistency

It’s persistence over consistency. We struggle with consistency, but persistence is a lot different. Persistence is: I show up every day and I try. And I can do that. It’s your version of showing up every day. Some days it looks like this, some days it looks like that, and other days it looks like sitting on the couch and answering a message, and that’s all you’ve got. Who cares? You’re still showing up. Show up how you can.

So, determination: be determined to be you. That should be everybody’s mantra. Be determined to be yourself, and be you in the way that works today. Today’s me is going to have a different energy than tomorrow’s me. And I might do things to make future me very, very happy, or I might do things that give future me mega amounts of pain, because I just wasn’t in a space to make future me’s life easier. Understanding that that is going to happen, and that’s okay. It’s fine.

Lauren says her best days are almost nonexistent this month. It happens. It really happens. The beginning of this month was hell for one of us. You all know that September and October for me were hell on earth, and then November got slightly better, and December got even better, and January has been amazing so far. But let me tell you, if I kept my focus on how bad things were in September and October, I would still be stuck there. It’s so easy to get stuck there. It’s the crying-over-spilled-milk thing. I know that’s a silly old saying, and okay, it’s not quite true: we are going to cry over the thing that happened. But we’re not going to wallow in it. Some days we don’t meet all the markers, and the next day is a clean slate. We shake our Etch A Sketch and we go on, because life is not stopping because we had a bad day. We shake the Etch A Sketch and try to beat our high score the next day.

Just keep swimming: obtainable, actionable, supported

It’s just keep swimming, essentially. Very Dory. And knowing that it’s okay to keep swimming. Maybe we need a life preserver some days. Maybe we’re the one dragging other people’s life preservers with us. Maybe you need the little motorboat today, with a motor to drive you somewhere, because you just can’t do it yourself. Where are you in your energy and your abilities? Is it obtainable today? Is it actionable today? And can you get support to get the actions done? Those are the three things that really support ADHD life, neurodivergent life, wherever you are in that process or on the spectrum. Because we are a spectrum, and we’re at a different spot on the spectrum every single day.

Even the two of us, who share quite a few comorbidities: there are days where we’re sitting there talking and I’ll just lose all my words, because my brain decided to take that moment to restart. Loading, loading. And there are days that I just can’t. Most of you will notice I’m allowing myself to just-can’t now, and that’s something new for me. It’s been really hard to accept that there are days I just can’t. But you know what? It’s okay to just-can’t today, and rely on somebody else for the motivation, the body doubling, the accountability, whatever it is you need for the day.

I want to tie up this video. I’m so happy I got to go live for a whole entire 25 minutes. This hasn’t happened in a while, and I am so excited to be back. We’ve made a commitment with each other to show up more like this throughout the weeks. I’m not going to say every single day, but we’re going to be going live in multiple different places, talking about life, about being entrepreneurs, about just being ADHD. We are so happy to be back. Have an amazing day, and if you have questions or need anything, just ask below. We’re always around. Have a good day, everybody.